the Human Race(s), standards of beauty, & the BJD hobby

This is very topical for me as this afternoon I finally took the plunge and ordered Iplehouse Ashanti. I have been kicking myself ever since I missed out on the Special Edition. Ebony resin costs so much more that you do need to think it over, and I found myself having to imagine how she would look with dark brown eyes, as she has blue in all the promo pics, which is a bit confusing. The piercing blue eyes of Cocori have always put me off the sculpt to be honest but I don't see this as "whitewashing" it's simply a company trying to make their dolls look as striking as possible. This is a hobby where dolls routinely have vampire teeth, horns, hooves, etc, why should the dark skinned dolls not get the same treatment?

My only quibble is that there so few dolls, even at Iplehouse, that have negroid bone structure and features, even where tanned skin options are available. Maybe it's because I come from rainy, old pasty faced Britain, but I have very rarely seen a Caucasian person who can tan as dark as a lot of the resins available. I guess that's another fantasy element?

Back to the light eyes in dark dolls issue, I have dark hair and very dark green eyes. I am quite happy about these facts and have several pairs of very dark eyes for my dolls. The are glass and good quality , they look great in real life but I haven't once been able to take a really good picture of them in a doll. I always resort to popping in a light coloured pair when I take pics as they just seem to catch the light more easily... maybe the explanation is as simple as that?

 

I agree about Cocori's blue eyes being off-putting, I didn't really like her until I saw owner pictures of her with differently coloured eyes. That being said, I am more of a fan of Ashanti and Benny

 

She is very pretty, something you see in owner pictures but there is something off-puttingly Owl-ish about her on Iplehouse's website, for me anyway. Benny, Ashanti and Kamau(?) all have beautifully sculpted black features that would be recognisable no matter what colour the resin, Cocori seems exotic but works just as well as a european sculpt, I could see her with pale freckled skin and red hair, as true red headed Celts often have plumper lips.

I just think dolls are out of bounds for racism though, we are dealing in the realms of fantasy and the companies are just trying to find new ways of tapping into that and finding all sorts of variations on what we find aesthetically pleasing. The earliest BJDs that I remember seeing had stereotypically Asian features but as more Westerners began to buy the dolls there seemed to be more and more coming out that were either ambiguous or Western looking. That's either the companies responding to this new market or more likely, artists expanding the range of features they sculpt because any artist becomes bored sculpting minor variations. As they are developing more stable dark resins I guess they are starting to look more at darker skinned people for inspiration. I don't care if the eyes they use are blue/pink/green/brown, I will just be happy to see more variety in the sculpts available.

 

I see the heart of the question as this: does the doll industry have power of persuasion over current/modern standards of beauty? Or do they just try to watch the majority preference and cater to it for their profit goal? Are they consciously trying to dictate which racial features will be most admired and desired?

Where do these standards originate?

Since I was about ten years old, I've been asking myself who are "they" who can control how I see myself, compared to "their" standard. I knew I was being absolutely contolled, but being aware of it did not give me the ability to reject the standard.

I believe the doll companies are in fierce competition to hold on, or increase their portion of the market.

I have a degree in Sociology because this kind of stuff intrigues me. I would have a lot more to say, but I'm afraid it would wander too far from the dolls. Women have had their feet bound, their necks stretched, their faces scared in intricate patterns, parts of their bodies removed [I know a mother was unhappy that her daughter had her real belly button removed during her tummy tuck, breast augmentation and some other surgical stuff done]. Took a lot of money and some considerable pain for the daughter to go through all that. Who did she do it for? _____________?

It isn't just racial features. Marilyn or Twiggy. Huge Afro, or chemical alterations and weaves. Absolute straight hair with a part down the middle -- and fat shoulders?? WHOSE idea was that?! Reference the 80's fashion. The ONE place a woman doesn't have to particularly worry about being large, and THEY decided women should have "fat" shoulders. Haaa ~ I know, it was to make a woman's waist look smaller. "(0_o)"

This makes the point that what is modern, cool, in, whatever the word...groovy?? Looks silly a few years later, until it comes "back in"...and is MODERN? again. But always with some slight alteration from the time before.

Directly back to the thread, I say there certainly does exist a strong craving for certain idealized caucasion features, for a lot of people. Fashion designers, celebrities, and YES, I'd say dolls all play a part in the mind control. [Hope I stayed close enough to topic.]

 

Thankyou FairEmma for posting that video. I know too many people who keep asking me, "but why are anime characters white?" The unnervingly popular idea that the Japanese are ashamed of themselves and want to look Caucasian is a sore spot for me, especially since I am Eurasian and have people constantly telling me I don't look like this or I do look like that rather than just accepting my genetics as fact - and this ties in the Western stereotype of what Asians look like. I've even had people argue the fact with me, and try to tell me what I am and am not - as if the fact that I don't fit in either stereotype is offensive to them.

I don't know where this narrow-mindedness comes from, but I suspect most people who say inane things like that are just poorly informed and are fed stereotypes which they in turn repeat as truth.

 

FairEmma, that video was quite interesting! Although I agree with its conclusions about racism and western ethnocentrism, some of its premises and uh, data-collecting are a bit off and even a bit facile. It's well established that anime characters have round eyes because the father of anime, Osamu Tezuka was heavily influenced by the original Disney characters (like Bambi. Note that these were not necessarily even human characters, rather a drawing style). In turn, other artists were influenced by him or his students. Cute and innocent became equated with large eyes, just as other Tezuka tricks, such as the angular, pulsing red lines on a person's forehead, or a sweat drop have a particular significance that is in no way realistic. They are shorthand to tell us a lot about a character in a few strokes.

To get back on topic, this has to do with bjds as the first Volks were heavily influenced by the manga/anime aesthetic. Huge, almost alien eyes (not western by any stretch of the imagination!), noses so small they couldn't possibly be functional on a human, mouths so tiny that they might not admit anything wider than a straw. Try to imagine one of these dolls scaled up to human size and walking down the street. How many would be startled by a human that looks like that?

At any rate, it's important to recognize that the way a culture portrays itself in art is not necessarily realistic, nor is it necessarily intended to be. The human figure was stylized in art-- today and in the past. Look at the statuary placed in Etruscan graves, or the paintings on Egyptian tombs. The human body doesn't look like either of these examples-- it's not possible to hold your body in the Egyptian pose shown, and the grin on an Etruscan kourous is seriously creepy. Somehow we are able to come to the conclusion that indeed this is stylization, but when it comes to manga/anime AND bjds for some reason we become very literal in our interpretation.

I've been watching Kuroshitsuji with my son, and was amused to see that in Japan it has been made into a musical. Both the main character (of English descent) and the butler (of Demon descent) are portrayed by Japanese. Apparently it doesn't matter much to the audiences or creator just what nationality the actors playing these characters are. I wonder why these things are such an issue for westerners?

 

sakuraharu, I totally agree that video leaves much to be desired in the realm of meticulous research! (I did qualify it as simplistic and superficial.) But, with respect to the eye size thing, I also think the author of this wasn't coming at the question from an historical development of influence in animation styles. (Didn't Betty Boop predate Bambi? Was there no connection there?) He/she just seems to be saying it's hard to decide which race has typically round eyes. To me, the vid is the kind of thing you'd talk about over beers and barbecue ... it might lead to an interesting topic for a senior thesis. That said, I think the sources and trajectory of influences is always fascinating.

One thing I've noticed, and I think some of the comments here echo it is this: once artists/companies broke the "colour barrier," hobbyists started commenting that colour alone didn't satisfy the reflection-of-ethnicity desires--if these are truly desires that would motivate a necessary portion of the audience to purchase in quantities that would make it financially worthwhile for the businesses to pursue incorporating them. Now, it seems the push is for more realistic physical features.

I am curious about that 51cm Soom Idealian, London. In photographs, his features seem more representative of certain racial/ethnic groups, and I think he's a fascinating sculpt. I wonder how appealing the audiences will find him ... not that we could really control for ethnic features, as that 51cm size/scaling may not be terribly popular just now.

 

I have to agree here. One thing about stylization that that video proves out well, I think, is that the more stylized a design is, the easier it is to see oneself in it -- to some degree, anyway. With the more realistic sculpts and skin tones, I suspect the urge for 'real' also becomes stronger at the same time, and with that comes some questions and concerns that may not be as profound when it comes to the more stylized sculpts because of that difference.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a study done that shows that we, as humans, find things more and more desirable the more it's like us? But at some people it becomes too much like us and our desire for it actually plummets to the point where it's a replica of us? I think this might have been in relation to robots, but it would be interesting, to me, to see that aspect applied to dolls. Yes, a lot of us want some features more realistic. But imagine if you were buying something that looked EXACTLY like a person you'd see on the street, only 2 feet tall. It would be more than a little freaky, if you ask me.

Just a thought.

Edit: It's called the Uncanny Valley for anyone interested. Yes, it applies to robots, but there is a section labelled "stuffed animals" as well, I'm assuming that the bjds could also be applied to this- even though they do not move or speak.

 

Interesting point - I can hnoestly say I havent ever noticed the lack of atypical combinations in ethnic coloured dolls....

Personally I see the BJD hobby as not just Art but as a Fantasy representative in someways so the conflicing hair and eye colours on darker skinned dolls as sold by companies only confims that for me as an individual... the likelihood fo seeing an Africa American with Platinum Blonde hair in Australia is only likely if Lil'Kim goes on tour But I have seen IH Ashanti with said coloured hair - and its awesome!! There is no feasible reason for any company to adhere to anything stereotypical because the hobby is in direct contradiction to that - its a world where your dolls can be anything they want and you can represent a part of yourself externally both your wants and desires all overlayed onto an external physical form....

 

Yes, there's a thread on this here: link

It's very interesting to think about!

 

Well, this discussion is very interesting!

Of my five dolls there is only one that has brown eyes and she looks stunning in them, no other colour works for her. The other dolls have dark green, light blue, grey and golden eyes... eyes which work for them... so I do not think that doll owners look to reproduce the caucasian type, but only to reproduce the doll that works for them, like I did.

For instance, none of my dolls is a tan, but I have a light tan Benny on my wishlist and she'll definitely get the eye colour that works for her, most probably dark brown or black, but I'll see this only when she'll be here some day in the future...

So, this is my experience, and I think that like me, doll owners just want to reproduce the doll that works, the doll that rocks... I don't know if that makes sense... and sometimes it's though a white blue-eyed blonde one and sometimes it's though a dark brown-eyed black haired one... (or red-eyed vampire, etc...)

personnally, I've got a soft spot for ginger-haired and dark/black-haired dolls (yes, I know, the one in my avatar is blond, but she's cosplaying Alice in Wonderland, but she's actually the one wearing brown eyes... ^_^)

 

I wonder. If ABJD artists and companies start following the path of sculpting and styling more ethnically realistic dolls that reflect non-Asian cultures, at what point might those dolls stop being Asian Ball-Jointed Dolls? To a great extent, the "Asian" part is important (initially Japan, shortly thereafter Korea). That's the birthplace of the art, the aesthetic and the cultural context of these dolls we are drawn to. Irrespective of the ethnicity of the artist crafting in the ABJD style, the Asian part is the influence.

There are many varieties of BJDs out there. Not all are ABJDs.

Alongside asking, "How come they don't show more realistic styling?" we might also ask, "Why do we think/feel they need to?" Maybe the question isn't, "What does this say about them?" but rather, "What does it say about us?" We're drawn to this non-representative, misproportioned aesthetic, fully aware it's non-representative and that a human with those body proportions (and features) in any skin colour would look rather silly, and yet we feel there might be something racist in the dearth of colour combinations that represent global diversity?

 

I can't really say I agree that the dolls having diverse ethnic origins in their concept makes them somehow 'non-Asian', since it's a broader aesthetic -- it's not like there is no one non-Asian depicted in other Asian art, so why would the dolls be an exception to that?

I actually quite dislike the heavily exaggerated and distorted proportions, personally. That said, the dolls I do enjoy fall under the 'realistic' heading within the ABJD world -- but they're still heavily stylized compared to any real person, so it can't be said that there's no aesthetic at work there that is creating a stylization. No one would mistake, say, a Soom Sard for a Ken doll, but they have similar levels of realism.

 

I think it depends on how it's handled -- there's room for quite a bit of variation within the aesthetic, and it is possible to include ethnic features while still maintaining a level of stylization.

Those are interesting questions, as even the more realistic abjds still aren't really all that realistic -- especially considering the amount of detail this medium can actually carry (not to mention all the things owners do to their dolls that fall totally into the realm of fantasy). I do think that it's very possible for people to see what they expect to see whether it's really there or not. The US (I'm using the US as an example, since this is where I live) has some really sticky history when it comes to race relations, and on top of that is very diverse which brings up many questions about how we interact with people different from ourselves. If this is the lense with which a person sees the world through, then it's easy to project what are concerns for US citizens onto other places. The problem is that other places aren't necessarily like the US, but it's hard to break away from that mindset. So even though these dolls tend not to be that realistic in the first place and come from a completely different culture, they're still being subjected to expectations based on the experiences people have in this part of the world. Perhaps this is an inevitability, yet it still seems somewhat odd to me considering that these dolls hail from clear across the globe and have a primary market that is very different in it's ethnic makeup than us Western abjd fans -- that's why topics like this always make me scratch my head a little -- not because I find issues surrounding race and ethnicity unimportant, but because it feels like they tend to be misapplied when it comes to abjd debate threads. As someone else pointed out earlier, this would be a very different discussion if it was concerning children's play dolls made for a primarily Western audience -- that's where a lot of very real and valid concerns show up, however, that isn't what's being talked about here.

The thing about the whole styling issue, is that if you look at abjds in general -- there is an awful lot of fantasy colors that happen in promo pics for all skin tones. The dark skinned dolls really aren't being treated any differently than the NS and BW.

 

First and foremost (in case anyone is using them interchangeably):

race = skin color
ethnicity = nationality/background

I think we're Americanizing these dolls a little too much. Like others have said, this is an Asian aesthetic; personally, I'm more turned off by some dolls with bizarre hip to thigh ratios, and how narrow some doll's waists are. And that's purely for aesthetic reasons, not because I feel they're promoting strange proportions. It never really bothered me - nor did I notice - that there would be a question of why a darker doll gets light eyes. I just don't understand why this is an issue.

 

writerm, biologically speaking race is a controversial term. There are many biologists who say it doesn't exist in the biological sense. That is, you can cluster people based on their genetics into Asian, European, African, etc., but not everyone fits neatly into one of these clusters as people have more diverse genetic ancestry than we realize. In some cases there are more differences genetically between members of what is considered a race than between members of different races. This makes sense as very few populations on earth are isolated. There is no real boundary between Europe and Asia, for instance, so you see blending at the edge of each continent. Someone at the very western edge of Asia might have more in common genetically with an Eastern European than an East Asian. So it's more that there are gradations of traits among populations.

There's a nice article about the topic here: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic185351.files/RACEgen.pdf

Ethnicity, on the other hand refers to a group of people who share a common culture and interbreed. So you would expect members of the same ethnic group to have more in common with each other genetically than with outsiders.

I do agree that this discussion is coming from a very American-centric viewpoint, particularly the discussion of what makes features "black," for instance. African Americans' ancestry is predominantly West African, less often from other regions of that very large and genetically diverse continent. So for people to say "black" features are not seen on most dark skinned dolls neglects the other populations in Africa and elsewhere that have dark skin.

This discussion also seems to be giving short shrift to the fact that as globalization increases, multiethnic/multiracial people are increasing in number-- people who often don't fit into neat (and often arbitrary) categories of race/ethnicity. Certainly their features/skin/eye color have as much of a right to be celebrated in dolls as anyone else's.

 

Splynterhayde, I LOVE you. Seriously. You have just summed up what I've been wrestling with as a black girl dealing with modern representations of beauty. I honestly have nothing more to add, but I'd like to point to what you've said as an example of how these things can operate on a subconscious level, so hopefully rather than getting offended, people on both sides of the debate will take this as an opportunity to really take a good look at what they consider beautiful. I know I will, especially since only two of my dolls have darker resin tones, and none of them have brown eyes- not one. One of my tan dolls will have grey-green eyes, and one will have grey. I'm not necessarily going to change that, but it definitely gives me an awful lot to think about- why do I find those colours more appealing? Why can't I create a doll that looks like me and find it just as appealing? Again, you've made a purely excellent point and I commend you.

To tackle the question Writerm brings up as to why this is an issue, it is an issue because it actually relates to the much larger issue of race perceptions around the globe. I don't think that we're simply americanizing the topic because we're talking about the perception of black and white- that's actually something that exists in Latin America (between fair skinned descendants of Europeans and dark skinned descendants of slaves brought there by said europeans) And in Africa itself for the same reason. This issue is global because of the legacy of colonialism that touched nearly all of the world, and left behind it a message that fair skin was better because fair skin was the oppressor, the top of the pyramid etc. It is much larger than America, and it's much larger than just dolls. To bring it back down to bjds though, this image is reinforced by this art form, whether directly or indirectly when we see things like that. However, Asia's aesthetic is singular to itself in many ways because of their limited contact with Blacks and Europeans as it were. We can't necessarily put it in those terms, but we can see it as a very generic sort of misunderstanding or ignoring of black natural beauty.

Sakuraharu makes an excellent point as well- many argue that race is not biological, and I personally agree, why on earth would there be human subspecies? But the point here is that this representation of african features with non-african pigmentation etc. if you will, overlooks the natural beauty that may exist in those features. Doll companies almost never use brown eyes in general- and it's as if those colours are seen as some how lesser. I think what people are doing in this thread is examining the reasons why that may be, and what hidden subconscious behaviours may be the cause of it.

 

Teruchan, your points are beautifully said and refresh the view I was attempting to take. Thank you.

edit: I also wanted to add that in my arguments, I used racism against black individuals most to illustrate my points because this is what I am most versed in. I agree one hundred percent that all minorities should be represented accurately and fairly in media, and that includes art, or works of art in the form of dolls. There are other instances of racism that are not prevailant to North America, but any failure of myself to bring them up leads to lack of knowlege regarding societal occurances of the matter in other nations. I accept full responsibility of the single-pointedness of my case.

 

So bjd companies are obligated to create dolls representative of all minorities? Don't get me wrong -- I wouldn't want any company to create a doll representing a negative view of a minority group, but beside that don't they get the artistic freedom to decide what dolls they want to make and how they want to style them? If an artist chooses to not produce work featuring examples of X group of people does that make them racist or part of a larger problem? Don't artists get to choose what subjects they want to focus on? Why should bjd companies stick only to the most realistic styling choices possible with one skin tone when they don't with any others? Do you see what you're asking here? We aren't talking dolls marketed for kids or mass media, remember.